A small building tucked away in the tiny northern Iowa community of Stacyville, IA is a cornerstone of a revolutionary model of chicken production and processing that connects immigrant farmers and workers with customers seeking delicious, nutritious poultry.
Revolutionary in the sense that they are processing chickens raised using principles as old as humankind.
Reginaldo Haslett-Marroquin grew up on a Guatemala farm, amid an environment where chickens thrive under a canopy of trees and shrubs, much as they have for centuries.
After moving to Minnesota in 1992, he began working to establish a model mimicking that environment, and that would provide a pathway into agriculture for fellow immigrants, as well as traditional Midwest producers.
In 2018, Reginaldo co-founded “Tree-Range Farms™,” which produces chickens on a series of paddocks. Each paddock includes a barn where the chickens roost in the evening and are released every morning into a 1.5-acre paddock planted with elderberry and hazelnut shrubs, natural grasses, annual crops, and sprouted grains. The birds dine on the forage, along with bugs, while the canopy provides shade and protection from predators.
Meanwhile, Reginaldo also founded the Regenerative Agriculture Alliance, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to generating a more regenerative, socially just and equitable agricultural system. RAA conducts extensive educational and outreach programs to teach producers how to utilize this regenerative model.
Raising chickens using this new system is one thing. Getting the finished poultry to market is another.
Three years ago, RAA purchased the small processing facility in Stacyville and began implementing a series of upgrades to process the Tree-Range Farms birds, along with poultry from other surrounding farms. In line with their mission, RAA is utilizing the facility as an opportunity for America's newest citizens.
Arnulfo Perrera, a graduate of the Pan-American Agricultural School in Honduras, was hired to manage the facility. He gained several years of experience working in a swine processing plant owned by one of the large processing companies. Delicia Hernandez, a native of Mexico and graduate of Chapingo Autonomous University with a degree in food safety, joined Arnulfo as assistant manager last year.
Arnulfo and Delicia, along with the 14 full-time seasonal employees at the Stacyville processing facility, have steadily ramped up production.
“We have had three years of operation, and in those years, we have increased our numbers from 5,000, to 38,000 to 60,000 last year, but our challenges are with equipment. There is a lot of equipment available for larger processors, but we need technical assistance on equipment that will fit our size of operation,” Arnulfo said.
“We are always searching for partners like USDA and Flower Hill so that we can grow and succeed,” he said.
Enthusiasm for the RAA’s regenerative poultry model has spread far beyond southern Minnesota and northern Iowa. At the RAA's annual Regenerative Poultry Convergence meeting in Northfield in March, the roughly 200 attendees included producers from around the country, including the Makoce Agriculture Development on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which is utilizing the USDA’s meat and poultry processing technical assistance as they develop a similar model using a mobile processing facility to process birds raised by tribal members.
Arnulfo noted, “As a USDA-inspected plant, we have the opportunity to meet farmers on a daily basis and connect them with direct markets. And, as a partner of Tree-Range Farms™, we are helping farmers connect with larger markets,”